The justice ministry said judges were ready to work around the clock to implement the pardon because they have to visit each of more than 30 prisons and assess every prisoner who may qualify for release.

The Dutch justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut 1,200 jobs in the prison system. A decline in crime has left many cells empty.
During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led to overcapacity in the prison system. The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees.

More proof that they can't put all of us in jail. CA. wants to reduce the prison population, currently 170k. "We simply can't afford the punishment that we've had in California," Petersilia said.(prison expert)
The jailers say they must adhere to court ordered population caps. Must be nice to decide which court orders to follow. In CA., parole violations account for 70,000 prison admissions each year.

In the last decade, New York drastically reduced its prison population and at the same time experienced a huge drop in crime. Indiana, on the other hand, drastically increased its prison population — and consequently the burden to taxpayers — while seeing a much smaller drop in crime than the national average.

Family of a Second Hawaii Prisoner Murdered in Mainland Prison Files Suit Against State of Hawaii and Corrections Corporation of America

Honolulu, HI – May 23, 2012 – For the second time in three months, the family of a Hawaii prisoner murdered at a private prison in Arizona filed a lawsuit against the State of Hawaii and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) (NYSE: CXW).

WASHINGTON — Conditions in California’s overcrowded prisons are so bad that they violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday, ordering the state to reduce its prison population by more than 30,000 inmates.

But CCA, to borrow a trope from journalism, buried the "lede" in the governors' letter. The real head-snapping revelation appeared in the third-to-last paragraph: in exchange for buying a state's prison, CCA required that the state prison agency ensure that the prison remained at least 90% full. Translation: We'll buy your prisons and keep 'em orderly and clean, so as long you keep the prisoners coming in.

"Traditional prison," writes Graeme Wood in this month's Atlantic, "has become more or less synonymous with failed prison." One radical solution: scale back traditional prisons in favor of sophisticated monitoring devices.

Americans make up just 5 percent of the world's population but account for 25 percent of the population behind bars. Why? Because prisons are a big business and the WAR on Drugs, CNN reporter Fareed Zakaria says. The total number of Americans under correctional supervision (prison, parole, etc.) is 7.1 million, more than the entire state of Massachusetts. Prisons are a big business. Most are privately run, have powerful lobbyists and have bought most state politicians.

"When everything is illegal,﻿ everyone is a criminal." The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world—more even than China or Russia. Prof. Daniel J. D'Amico explains that as of 2010 more than 1.6 million people were serving jail sentences in America. Professor D'Amico suggests that "prisons are not what we think about when we think of America, and they shouldn't have to be." According to D'Amico, a free country should not have 1.6 million people in prison, and a fiscally responsible country cannot afford to. As Prof.